As the smoke started getting lost around the theater, Rosalynde looked around to search for the Lady she served, the fumes in her eyes nearly making her shed unwanted tears as her hand found the back of Pharah's dress.

Crouching at Pharah's same level she found the head of the apparent heir, rolling gently the girl on her back to try and make her breath better, an ear on her chest to check if life was still flowing inside her body.

Calming her racing heart, she concentrated all her thoughts on trying to find a heartbeat, but the screaming and bellows of the spectators rushing towards the exit doors made it nearly impossible.

She made her elbows hit the ground, frame crashing against Pharah's unmoving one as she closed her eyes in hope of detecting the heartbeat.

Alienating herself from the rest of the world, she made two fingers press against Pharah's neck, for there on she kept on waiting.

And she waited, waited and waited until she heard something under the layer of the dress, a feeble but steady heartbeat.

Rolling off of the apparent heir, Rosalynde got up after tearing the edges of her dress to move better, trying to pinpoint exactly what was going on all around her.

She looked on her left, her eyes finding no one on the close boxes, both Lord Regulus' and Greys' void of human figures occupying them.

A twirl of air behind her made whatever adrenaline left in her body surge, grabbing a pin she'd styled her hair with spin on itself, pointing the sharp edge to the throat of the person that'd crept inside the imperial box.

But halted her hand as the small blade made contact with the covered throat of the Duke of Sternstorn, his violet eyes taking in the scene as Rosalynde lowered the weapon, hand falling to the side.

"How is her highness?" Lord Regulus asked as Rosalynde moved out of the way to let him get close to Pharah's unmoving body.

"Alive, I shielded her with my body to prevent anything from coming into contact with her, but the shock wave that followed the explosion probably made her body shut down on its own," Rosalynde answered immediately, taking a moment to collect herself as the duke of Sternstorn mimicked the same gestured Steel had done the minute before.

"What about you?" Rosalynde's body and mind seemed to not comprehend his words, the gears inside her head halting as they then started turning backwards.

"Unscattered. However I'll have to leave her in your care, there's something I absolutely need to check," it was the first time she'd ever ordered him, but she knew what her eyes had seen in the instants before the explosion had taken place.

The image of Madame Hellenia smiling at her was now the only thing Rosalynde's mind could focus on.

"Steel!" The voice of Lord Regulus seemed so far when she turned around to hear the rest of the phrase he was going to stay.

"Be careful, and come back alive." All that Steel did in reply was nod her head, gaze turning towards Pharah's body before her mind was made up completely.

Closing the door behind her, Rosalynde looked at the pin in her hand, clenching it as tight her hand could without breaking her bones, placing it then back on her head as she tried pinning some locks away from her face.

She then started running towards the stair that led close to the backstage, taking off her heels as she approached the first wooden step while she discarded them somewhere behind her, as if leaving a trail for someone to follow her lead.

The smoke she'd experimented inside the box seemed nothing compared to the insufferable gray smoke she was met while descending the first steps, her breathing becoming rugged and uneven as she raised a sleeve over her nose and mouth.

"Steel!" Rosalynde didn't even turn around as she figured out immediately who'd been the one calling her name, cursing out loud as Grey was quick in catching up with her.

"Pity that you escaped from being buried under the roof," she seethed as another door materialized in front of them.

"How cruel of you to pray for the death of a comrade of yours. Did you see her?" He whispered the last part, making Rosalynde confirm that what she'd seen hadn't been a fruit of her imagination.

When they finally exited beside the orchestra pit, Rosalynde surveying the damage that the bomb had caused, her eyes landing on a broke harp scattered on the lower pit floor.

She didn't have time to look for Katherine, she had to find the woman that knew exactly what had happened tonight.

"She entered the backstage from this door!" Grey shouted as he pushed the door open with his shoulder, breaking the lock before inviting Rosalynde to lead their small adventure between what looked like a labyrinth of robes and electrical circuits.

That, and the fire that was slowly spreading all around.

"Katherine," Rosalynde whispered. Averting her gaze one last time before following Grey inside the backstage of the imperial Opera.

Of Madame Hellenia there was no trace, just the sudden circuits producing sparks and the tips of the hanging ropes over the stage started catching fire.

But what made Rosalynde's figure tremble with sheer impatience was the complete absence of noise all around them. No screams, no footsteps rushing towards the exits, no doors slamming as the theaters' atmosphere slowly started morphing into something darker.

Something she'd grown well accustomed to a long time ago: death, this place was slowly turning into a grave, a massive grave ready to collapse on itself.

It'd been premeditated, that was all Rosalynde had realized while they searched for the woman dressed in vibrant viridian.

"She's not here," Grey stated after a while, but Rosalynde shook her head in plain disagreement.

"She has too, there are only two exits to get out of here, we saw that the other one is blocked by the debris - meaning that the only way she can escape is from the exit behind us." Rosalynde reminded him, eyeing the only exit every once in a while to make sure Hellenia would have not caught them unprepared.

Rosalynde took small steps forward, her bare feet feeling the cold wood as time was starting to time out, the chances to find Hellenia thinning with each passing second.

She had to think, she knew the planimetry, and she knew there were no other exits except those two. Hellenia was hiding herself in a place where their eyes couldn't reach, or to be exact, a place their eyes couldn't reach and that they still hadn't searched.

That was then she figured it out, raising her head as the sound of breaking ropes filled the air, slicing it as something started materializing over Grey's head.

"Move it!" She shouted, bursting into a sprint as she slammed her body against Grey's firm one, knocking him out of the trajectory of the falling object.

The fanal that hit the ground seemed to confirm the theory she'd thought of, and as she raised her head for the second time, she was met with the mocking gaze of that woman standing in the middle of a beam suspended at the edge by two iron chains.

"Fancy meeting so soon Lilian, or should I call you Miss Steel." Rosalynde spat on the ground as reply before her usual smile started playing on her lips.

"How about getting down so we can carry out a decent conversation?" Rosalynde offered a savage smile in reply.

"And have you immobilize me the second my feet touch the ground? No, I prefer staying up here if you don't mind," Hellenia replied with a tone full of sarcasm.

"Pity, I was hoping you were ready for another game of Wherewolf," but Hellenia was already on the move, looking around her as she took out from the folds of her dress a small dagger, mimicking Rosalynde's own expression as she went to cut another robe.

"Now it's your turn to move it!" It was Grey that this time took action first, grabbing Steel by an arm before pulling her towards him, the bag full of flour landed on the ground.

"Grey, it saddens me that you decided to change your mind," Hellenia said before hopping on another beam, this time a metallic one.

"Oh Hellenia, it saddens me that you believed I had thoughts of associating myself with someone like you," he replied with a natural coldness.

If Hellenia had been taken aback from his words then she was hiding her reaction pretty well, narrowing her eyes slightly in reply.

Rosalynde grinded her teeth together, taking out the pin from her hair for the second time, looking around for the closest rope she could cut without using too much strength. Eyeing one that seemed sturdy enough to take on her weight, she slipped away from Hectors' arms before slicing the rope with one cut, her body ascending towards the roof as she left Grey on the ground.

Her cold feet touched the ground just as Hellenia started twisting the dagger in her hand, the tip of the weapon rotating against her thumb, awaiting for the other woman to come to her.

Rosalynde however kept her distance from her, well aware of the instability of the beams the woman in viridian was standing on, those chains keeping her beam hovering over the air looked as if they would have shattered after laying a single feather over it.

"Why aren't you moving, girl? Afraid of taking me on?" That didn't make Rosalynde lose her composure, Rosalynde who kept on analyzing the chains and the ropes all around them was nothing but eager to rip the latter to nothing more than thin pieces of meat.

"If you want to take her down then do it now," Steel heard Grey say, but that was not enough for her to avert her gaze.

She had a way to do that, a way she didn't like using to bring her adversaries down, a way that'd never failed her.

But the price she would have paid after that would have manifested without fail, and that was something she'd learned to despise ever since she'd done that.

"Keep your eyes on me girl!" Rosalynde dodged just in time as she saw from the corner of her eyes Grey taking out a gun from his undervest, pointing it at one of the two iron chains sustaining Hellenia, firing it against the roof close to the unsteady woman.

It was a distraction, something that would have made Hellenia momentarily focus on him, giving her the time to do what she had to do to bring her down.

Making her mind up, she made her eyes close before opening them again, a surge of power mixed with a new pump of adrenaline running down her back and ending to her toes. A grasp filled the air as Hellenia started losing her foothold, stumbling up and down the beams, all this without Rosalynde taking her eyes off her target.

It was only after Madame Hellenia started scratching her throat in obvious sign of distress that Steel took action, bouncing towards the other woman, stepping on the iron beam while landing a painful kick in the middle of her ribs. It made the other completely lose the grip she had on herself, right foot slipping off the suspended beam before falling down, Rosalynde jumping right after to make sure Hellenia would not get away from her grasp.

"Not so tough now are you?" Rosalynde grinned at the woman she'd pinned under her, the look in her eyes filled with the raw desire that sometimes she just couldn't say no too.

The need to kill was impossible to resist at times like these, the feeling of taking a life away from people like the woman under her had been fueling her will to stay alive.

Killing was what kept her anchored to the ground, bound by the chains of blood that fastened her to the prison that the human mind called insanity.

But she decided to not give in to that, it still was too soon for her to descend to the lowest levels of Hell.

"So, ready to play a little game with me," but all she got was the rasping of a woman now barely breathing.

"No words? Come on Madame, grace me with the same voice you took away from the protegeè of the lady I serve," she started laughing at her face, gripping the other woman's face so hard that a crack resonated through the backstage.

A broken bone was nothing compared to what Rosalynde would have done her behind the iron bars of the cells located deep down, under the Imperial Citadel.

"Steel, stop now, you're going to kill her if you continue whatever you're doing," it took Rosalynde a few glimpses to remind herself that she wasn't exactly alone, even if the person that'd accompanied her was nothing more than an intruder in her line of work.

"I know exactly what I'm doing," she said between chunks of uncontrolled laughter.

"No. No you do not," the tone in his voice had seemed to change to Rosalynde's ears, even if she wasn't even sure he'd spoken in first place. Usually she was good at keeping the lust in check, but tonight her reason seemed to have lost itself in the meanders of her memory.

When Rosalynde heard him moving behind her it was too late, his arms pulling her away from the struggling woman,making Hellenia buy enough time to retake control of her body, hands searching for something inside the pockets of her dress.

A loud sound was all that was heard after, a hole in the wall all that was left of the backstage as Rosalynde struggled out of Hector's grasp, hands collected into fists as she slammed them on the floor.

"You made her escape!" She screamed at him, eyes full of fury.

She tried standing to pursue the escaping target, but Grey was once more over her, pinning her furious form to the ground.

"Look at yourself in the mirror before answering woman, then we can talk." He shoved her arms against the pavement as he looked around for some type of mirror to show her.

It was only after seeing her reflection inside a small hand mirror that Steel started calming down, sitting cross-legged on the floor as her mind started slowly healing in part the old wounds from the past.

Wounds like wild beasts that still kept on feasting on her mind.

"Feeling a bit better now that you're not wrapping your hands around her neck?" Grey queried at her, stepping away to give her some space.

She shrugged in reply.

"Not even a thank you for saving your life? I won't lie when saying I expected a bit of gratitude coming from you," he continued.

"You're a deadman spouting nonsense," she said under her breath, breaking the mirror he'd given and taking a shard of glass in her hand, envisioning the exact moment of when she would have sliced his throat.

"And you're forgetting that your comrades need me, so it wouldn't do you good if you kill me so soon," he made sure to underline the fact that the Apostles were her comrades, not his.

"Comrades, just individuals that will make the authority of the Crown never face its end." She scoffed while keeping her smile steady, steading herself as she then threw the shard of glass into the fire that had now caught up with them.

"How harsh of you, all good with your feet?" He changed the topic in an instant, pointing out the blood that was beginning to stick to her toes.

She'd been so focused on catching that slippery bitch that she hadn't even realized that some shards of the windows backstage had cut a deep wound in her skin.

"Here." He took off his shoes, throwing them at her, as she caught them with ease.

They were at least five sizes bigger than hers, but it'd been her fault for using heels to accompany Pharah here.

"They'll do. For now let's make sure that we get out of here, looks like the place is going to collapse any second now." He grabbed her by the elbow, pulling her out of the burning building onto a dark alley of the High Strands, turning around as the first tiles of the roof started falling to the ground.

"Who are they?" She asked, her back hitting against the wall as she tried catching her breath.

"I don't know much, just their name," he replied immediately after.

"That is?" She pressed him.

Grey licked his lips to shield them from the numbing cold before replying.

"Verity."